New Office Does Not Support Windows XP and Windows Vista

At a special event in San Francisco earlier today, Microsoft raised the curtain on the 15th version of its Office productivity suite, which has historically been a huge cash cow for the company. Speaking at the said press event, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer the new Office “will fully light-up when paired with Windows 8.” Well, turns out there really aren’t an awful lot of things out there beyond Windows 8 that can fire up the new Office, for Office 2013’s pyrotechnics are reserved for Windows 8 and Windows 7 only and users with older operating systems will need to upgrade in order to get in on the action.

According to the Office Customer Preview FAQ page, the new Office requires either Windows 7 or Windows 8 (Release Preview or higher) to run and that “it isn’t possible to install on a PC running Windows XP or Vista.” While Microsoft’s decision to not support the archaic Windows XP is not surprising, the two—er, few—remaining Vista users probably did not see this coming. It’s worth noting here that unlike the new Office, its predecessor, Office 2010, supports three generations of Windows beginning with XP.